From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 9 11:09:19 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 024CE1065675 for ; Wed, 9 Jun 2010 11:09:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lists@eitanadler.com) Received: from mail-iw0-f182.google.com (mail-iw0-f182.google.com [209.85.214.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF2C58FC1E for ; Wed, 9 Jun 2010 11:09:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iwn7 with SMTP id 7so2224825iwn.13 for ; Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:09:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.231.155.18 with SMTP id q18mr3213781ibw.44.1276081758108; Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:09:18 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.148.201 with HTTP; Wed, 9 Jun 2010 04:08:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Eitan Adler Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2010 14:08:58 +0300 Message-ID: To: questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: Subject: Too many defunct processes; kill -9 not working X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:09:19 -0000 Lately I've been getting a considerable number of defunct processes. I do not know of any major event that changed my computer (ie it is not related to an ports update or a freeBSD upgrade). This is often caused by me killing the process using kill -15 or kill -3 or kill -9. What can I do to determine why processes are not getting killed by kill -9? % ps -o ppid -o comm|grep defunct|cut -d ' ' -f 1 |xargs kill -9 typically gets rid of them (by killing their parent) -- Eitan Adler